


Helheim Keep

by qwanderer



Series: Midnight Mystery [12]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, Norse Mythology, Thor (2011)
Genre: Illusions, M/M, a startling lack of entropy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-16
Updated: 2012-09-16
Packaged: 2017-11-14 09:07:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/513598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qwanderer/pseuds/qwanderer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki's daughter and Loki's boyfriend are startled to meet each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Helheim Keep

**Author's Note:**

> If you've been following this series through the Loki/Tony tag, don't miss Hel's background story in the previous work of the series - if you're interested. This story should make sense without it.
> 
> Also, since people have been asking, I'm taking myth only as suggestion and not canon. My version of Loki has carried no children. He may have magically constructed a few but Hel is his only biological child.

"Now where is that book? I had a copy...oh, yes. I gave it to my daughter."

Tony spat his coffee everywhere. "What was that?"

"It has been too long since I have visited my daughter."

"You have a kid? You didn't say anything. She'd be welcome to visit here, you know. I get the impression you're not quite ready to go back to Asgard for that big family reunion."

"No," Loki said, inclining his head and giving Tony a small smile. "But Hel does not live on Asgard, nor is she able to visit Earth. She cannot leave Helheim Keep."

Tony looked thoughtful. "Now that I think of it, Thor once mentioned being Hell's uncle. I thought it was a joke."

"It is amusing how you have come to use her name. Her realm is cold, and no one who travels there is already dead."

"But she..." Tony shook his head. "No. Hang on. I'm still trying to get over the part where you have a daughter and _you never told me._ "

"I have lived for a thousand years or so. That makes for a great deal of important things to convey about my past. Hel never came up."

"Okay, any other kids, marriages, attempts to take over planets I should know about?"

"I was married to Hel's mother at the time. Hel's...unique condition came between us."

"She's unique? Of course your daughter's unique. Is she healthy?"

"That is an especially complex question to answer. By no stretch of the imagination does she have a functioning body, but as long as she stays within Helheim Keep, her existence is satisfactory and she is safe."

"And, uh. You were married."

"It was eight hundred years ago. It was an arranged marriage. It turned out that we were not as well suited to each other as my mother...as I...thought. I rarely saw her after Hel was born. It is nothing that need concern you."

Tony looked at Loki's face. "There's more there. It concerns you, so it concerns me. What happened?"

Loki's hand wrapped around the lower half of his face as he recalled that time, contemplated how much to share, and how to explain.

"Do you remember when I was playing the villain, with Jane as my hostage, and I winked at you? I expected to be arrested, to have explanations demanded of me. I expected everything to go wrong again. Instead you lifted your mask, trusting me. Instead you defended me. Instead you kissed me as if nothing had changed. That is the difference between you and Sigyn."

"Things looked bad, and she took the out?" Tony said, and Loki nodded. Tony shook his head. "People accuse _me_ of being all style and no substance. Your daughter was a bit different, and she bailed?"

"She accused me of black magic, of passing on some kind of curse to the child. She fled Asgard in favor of Vanaheim, where she still lives, as far as I know."

"And left you to raise Hel? Pun intended."

"It was her loss. Hel was the sweetest child, and she rules her realm well. I am pleased to have reason to journey there again."

"I'll go with you. If that's all right. I'd like to meet your daughter."

"The journey through Niflheim will not be easy for a human, and you may find Helheim uncomfortable as well."

"Why's that?"

"We will arrive outside the gates, in the wastes of Niflheim, which are intensely cold. I must warn you, it is most likely that when you step inside the gates of Helheim, the arc reactor will cease to function. However, neither will the shrapnel move closer to your heart."

"How can you know either of those things? What's so different about the place?"

"In scientific terms?" Loki gave Tony a flatly significant look and said, "Helheim is a place in which entropy does not function."

Tony's eyes widened. "Doesn't that kind of rule out things like breathing and living?"

"It rather does," Loki said, amused. 

"Uh, I hate to break it to you, but I'm not a god. I kind of need my body to function."

"Your body will keep very well," Loki said. "While you are a guest in Helheim, Hel's magic will allow you to move and think, but physically, you will be unchanging from the moment you step inside to the moment you leave."

"This is one of those 'magic just works' situations, isn't it?" Tony groaned. "I'm still not all that comfortable with those."

"Helheim Keep is the safest place in the realms," Loki said. "The worst thing that can happen to you there is absolutely nothing."

* * *

Tony and Loki approached the gates of Helheim. One of Loki's spells kept Tony from feeling the cold, and the only light came from the glow of the arc reactors visible on both their chests.

Loki raised his hand and shot two streams of sparks into the air, one green and one white. The gates swung open. A woman appeared, in a silky gray dress, and one side of her face looked black in the gloom. 

She looked at Loki and gasped. "Is that truly you?"

Loki smiled. "Yes, this is me, more truly myself than ever before. It's the most obvious of answers, isn't it, sweetheart? I am a frost giant, and you are a hybrid. I don't know why I never thought of it. I never had much in common with the royal family of Asgard."

Hel looked at the strange but doubly familiar features before her. "You have not much in common with frost giants I have known, either, and one does not tend to suspect one's father of such profound deception. But the real reason is because there is no cure. No others like me have survived." She smiled fondly. "You were blind to any answer that held no hope."

"Perhaps," he said, "and perhaps I was afraid to ask the right questions about myself."

The woman turned her head to Tony, and he saw a familiar red eye looking at him from the dark half of her face. 

"And who is this?" she asked.

"Wow," Tony said. "You're as beautiful as your father."

She smiled. "I am something of a conniseur of first impressions. And that was one of the most interesting that has been made to me."

"This is Tony Stark," Loki said. "He is a human, very influential on Midgard...and my lover."

"Oh!" said Hel, a hand straying near to her mouth. And then after a moment she continued. "I had thought, after what Mother did to you, that you would never trust in such a way again."

"I had thought so as well," said Loki. "After eight hundred years, the revelation of what went wrong, and indulging myself in madness long enough to lead an army against Midgard, I may have finally gotten over it. But it still took an extraordinary man to make me realize that."

She looked at them both with new enthusiasm. "Well, come in!" Hel said. "We have much to speak on."

"Wait a moment," said Loki. He took his green-glowing arc reactor from around his neck, and holding it by the chain, let it pass through the gate. It went dark. He looked to Tony.

"Only Hel's magic works inside the gates. But I swear to you, you will be safe."

Tony blew out a tense breath. "No entropy, huh?" he said. "This'll be new."

Hel created a magical light to float above her head, and then Loki stepped across the threshold, holding out a hand for Tony. The human put his hand in the blue one, and stepped inside. 

He looked down at the arc reactor. It was dark. He took stock of his body.

"I'm fairly certain my heart's not beating," he said. 

"No, it wouldn't be," Loki replied. "Now come on. I want to see the rest of the latest castle."

They walked through a series of rooms, all shining wood, each with a wall of windows looking out on something that wasn't actually there. 

The first was just stars. So many stars.

The second was a dim, mossy forest, dripping with rain. 

The third was the cool blue curves of ice caves.

The fourth was underwater, green light filtering through onto alien fish whose scales gleamed with intricate patterns. 

"If you're collecting views, I have a suggestion," Loki said. 

Tony was distracted by the alien fish as Hel put her dark blue hand to Loki's lighter blue temple. So when they came through the next door into the living room of the Malibu house, he gave a startled laugh. All the lights were out, except for the spot on the painting over the buffet, which was set dim. And, as it was intended, the room highlighted the view.

Loki had given her an image of just after sunset, the clouds glowing orange and the tide rising to near its height. The sound of the waves Loki loved came clearly through the glass. 

"Well I did tell Loki you'd be welcome to visit." Tony smiled and gave a slight bow and a flourish. "Welcome to our home."

Hel smiled. "Shall we sit here, then? I would love to take in this new view properly."

They sat on the illusory but real-feeling seats of this counterfeit house. 

"I brought you a present, as usual," said Loki, opening his bag. What he drew out was - of course! - the complete Harry Potter, in hardcover. 

"Something new and interesting?" she asked.

"The most popular books on Midgard at the moment," he said, "but perhaps, given that, the most interesting thing about them is how much of it is _not_ new. It all comes down to the same old fairy tales."

"Doesn't everything?" she said, smiling. "Will you read them to me?"

Tony tried to restrain a laugh. He really did.

Loki glared at him. "Please, try to recall, darling," and the way he said this word was truly sarcastic, "that the culture my daughter and I were raised in prizes highly the art of storytelling. Speaking a story aloud, artfully, is something every citizen of Asgard is proud to do. It is not, as Midgard has reduced it to, a task reserved only for nursemaids."

Hel turned a mischievous smile on Tony. "Is that how you view things? Perhaps you'd find it less amusing if I resumed my true form?"

"That isn't how you look?" Tony asked, curious now.

"When I came here, I was but a child, and here, nothing changes. Despite my current appearance," she said, and here dropped her glamor, her voice becoming higher, "I'll always be my father's little one."

"Huh," Tony said, as he looked at the thin-looking ten year old figure before him. She had the same face, split between deepest blue and cream, the same piercing red eye on one side.

"But my father is quite right," Hel continued in her new (or old, he supposed. Or young) higher voice. "And if you ever plan on visiting Asgard, this is something you should know. Like Helheim, Valhalla is not truly a place where we know that the dead walk and talk as if they are still alive. Valhalla is instead that time and place where stories are told of the honored dead. If you value your life, you will not, in Asgard, insult the telling of stories."

"Got it," Tony said. 

"Now, Hel, I wondered if I might look at one of the books in your library."

"Of course, Father."

He said the name of the book and it appeared in her hand a moment later. Loki settled in to read it. Tony asked Hel about the details of the non-entropic nature of her realm, and then about the world on which the fish in the next room lived.

The view changed slowly, the colors in the sky shading to red and purple. At one point Loki got up to light some candles, catching Hel's eye so that she might change the illusion appropriately. There was a well-practiced dance here, that of apparent host and true host, layered over that of father and daughter.

The subject of discussion turned to Loki.

"Before I settled into this shape," she said, gesturing to her true-but-adult form which she had resumed, "I used to try all kinds of appearances to see what effect they would have on new people, especially those sent here as Grandfather's prisoners. Some of the most frightening shapes were suggestions of Father's that I didn't think would work. But they must have been subtle and uncanny, because the longer the prisoner looked at me the more uncomfortable they got. One of the most memorable was a perfectly normal form with one invisible leg, so that I appeared off balance every time I took a step. I thought it would look merely silly, but Father insisted, and by the end I felt rather sorry for that particular prisoner. Whenever I wake him up he starts and twitches."

Tony was laughing. "Oh, that sounds just like Loki."

Hel smiled a little. "I see he's not shy with his true nature around you. That bodes well, I think, for the two of you. But what does Midgard as a whole think of him?"

"Actually, Loki's supposed to be dead, and on Earth he's known as Midnight Mystery or Joshua Albastru, an alien from an unknown planet. If anyone finds out he came here, it'll be much more obvious who he is."

"It's not a critical deception, but it is an amusing one," Loki said, putting down the book at last. "Some people on Earth see through it, but mostly the so-called 'conspiracy theorists' who are considered mad by the rest of the planet for believing in things like beings from places other than Earth, and wealthy people shaping the world to their whims." Loki smiled ruefully. "People who see more than the average idiot are treated the same way throughout the galaxy."

"All of my subjects are sleeping," she said. "No one is aware of your presence but me, and no one will be."

"Who _are_ your subjects?" Tony asked. "Did you just kind of show up on the planet and take it over? I know your father's liable to do that kind of thing..."

"No, Tony Stark. Niflheim is uninhabitable without me. Nothing grows here. My subjects are wanderers from across the realms, brought here by curiosity or a need to escape true death. And, of course, prisoners sent to me by Odin for safekeeping, and a few special requests of my own. Even one or two from Earth."

"'Special requests?'" Tony laughed. "Don't tell me, alien abductions are real?"

"Come now," said Loki. "I would not be so unsubtle as to leave such quantities of evidence as humans claim to have collected. No, I suspect those are the work of Chitauri and other related species."

"Father did rather botch the disappearance of Nicholas Flamel. He was supposed to be believed dead, but Nick just could not let go of his little reputation." Hel gave Loki an amused look and the hint of a smirk.

Loki continued the story from there. "He was much too much excited about the prospect of his own tomb. He talked about it to anyone who would listen. It was not at all long after I transported him here that it was dug up and found empty." The sorcerer sighed. "I really should have found someone else to bury there."

Tony scowled. "Wait, isn't he a character in Harry Potter?"

Loki chuckled. "Yes, and I'm sure he'll be amused to read about himself. Of course, he gets a rather more flattering interpretation in your literature than I or my daughter have had to tolerate. He never did puzzle out magic, not being a magical species. And yet he and his precious reputation continue."

"Well, a man's reputation means a lot. I don't know that I'll be able to stay away after I'm supposed to be dead." Tony grinned. "And I don't plan on dying anytime soon, now that I know of a couple of outs."

"I like you," Hel said. "I hope you do come here if you ever find yourself dying again. You are one whose knowledge I would preserve and use."

"I'll think about it. Nice place to visit, but literally imossible to live here. Still, next time somebody tells me to go to hell, I'm going to thank them."

Tony held his breath as they walked out of the gates, but his arc reactor came on like turning on a light bulb (incandescent, not CFL) as they passed the walls. He could feel his heart beating steadily but a little faster than usual. The absence of the sensation and of his accustomed glow was strange, but if possible, their return was stranger.

"Does that count as a near-death experience? What is that, five now I've had?" Tony asked Loki.

"No it does _not_ count," Loki insisted as they walked out through the cold stillness of Niflheim. "Centuries-old magic is perfectly reliable. You had a much higher probability of dying from your flirtations with palladium poisoning and various vehicular collisions."

"Statistics aren't really the point here. I'm sticking with just times my heart has stopped beating."

Loki turned slowly to face Tony. "Your heart has stopped beating five times?"

"Lemme see," Tony said, holding up a hand to count. "One. Yinsen told me it happened on the operating table while he was taking out the shrapnel he could find. Two. When I switched out the prototype reactor for the second model, Pepper pulled the electromagnet out early and I was technically in cardiac arrest. Not for long, but still. Three. After Obie stole the second model it took me a couple of minutes to get the first one back in. I wasn't under monitors then but I'm pretty sure from the way I couldn't move or breathe properly. Four. When I went through the portal with that nuke, Jarvis tells me I also went into arrest briefly. Not sure if that was the shrapnel or the being in space without an airtight suit. It was pretty beat up by that point. Anyway, five. Just then, in Helheim. No heartbeat at all and definitely the longest time I've gone without one."

Loki blinked.

"And you trust this technology of yours to keep you alive?" he said eventually.

"It's what I've got," said Tony, "and I understand it. If it doesn't work I can fix it."

Loki put his hands on Tony's shoulders. "I begin to understand why you disliked the silver apple so much," he said. "Let us agree that it would be better to keep both our hearts beating constantly from now on."

"Agreed," said Tony. "But does that mean no more visiting Hel? I liked her. She's got all the best embarrassing Loki stories."

"Technically there is no time within the walls of Helheim Keep, so there was never a time when your heart had stopped."

"A technicality," Tony said, rolling his eyes. "I'm counting these visits in my tally."

"Whatever," Loki said, and transported them home.

**Author's Note:**

> That's everything in this series copied over from ff. I've got a couple more things in the works, including further chapters of The Thaumification of Darcy Lewis. I'll also be posting a couple of one-shots with just Tony. Anyway my tumblr is qwanderer if you want to keep up with what I'm doing. Search "art" for illustrations of this series.


End file.
